This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The End of the American Dream.
Scientific study after scientific study is showing that too much time on social media can be extremely harmful both mentally and physically. But even though most of us know this, very few of us actually alter our behavior in a meaningful way.
When Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and other major social media platforms first emerged, we welcomed them with open arms. They were a lot of fun and they allowed us to interact with family, friends, and society as a whole in ways that we had never been able to do before. But they were also extremely addictive, and they rapidly became transformed into dumping grounds for just about everything toxic, negative and malevolent that you can possibly imagine. Today, many of us spend far more time on social media than we do with real people, and as you will see below, that has enormous implications for our future.
A growing body of scientific research clearly indicates that spending too much time on social media can be very bad for us. For example, just consider what a long-term study that was conducted by Gallup over a period of two years ultimately concluded…
Holly Shakya, assistant professor at UC San Diego, and Yale professor Nicholas Christakis spent two years following 5,208 adults who are part of a Gallup long-term study. After asking permission, they monitored these subjects’ Facebook use directly from Facebook, rather than asking subjects to report their own use. (People often don’t realize how much time they spend on the social network.) And they checked in with subjects on their emotional and physical well-being, as well as their body-mass index (BMI), three times over the course of two years.
“Overall, our results showed that, while real-world social networks were positively associated with overall well-being, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with overall well-being,” the researchers wrote in a Harvard Business Review article. “These results were particularly strong for mental health; most measures of Facebook use in one year predicted a decrease in mental health in a later year.”
That doesn’t sound good at all.
If you knew that something was going to consistently degrade both your mental and physical well-being, would you engage in that activity every single day?
And yet most of us simply cannot go 24 hours without checking our social media accounts.
One way that social media is affecting our mental health is that it is making all of us a whole lot more impatient. Just check out what a survey of 2,000 British adults found…
Patience is a virtue, but it’s becoming an exceedingly rare quality in modern society. According to a new survey of 2,000 British adults, all of the luxuries of modern life have made most people incredibly impatient — across pretty much every aspect of their lives. Three quarters of those surveyed said they believe the dominance of digital technology, such as smartphones and on-demand TVs, are to blame for this ever growing lack of patience.
Respondents reported becoming frustrated after just 16 seconds of waiting for a web page to load, and after 25 seconds of waiting for a traffic light to change.
When I read those paragraphs, I found myself nodding my head in agreement.
These days, I have a hard time waiting for anything, and I always feel like I am in a hurry.
Can you identify with that?
I have a feeling that many of you can.
Another study that focused on teens found that “emotional investment in social media was strongly correlated with higher levels of anxiety”…
A study of more than 450 youth aged 11 to 17 found that 97 percent of participants indicated that they used social media. Thirty-five percent of participants were categorized as poor sleepers. Forty-seven percent of participants were identified as anxious. Also (and here’s the kicker), higher emotional investment in social media was strongly correlated with higher levels of anxiety.
Do we really want our young people to be bundles of nerves? Anxiety continues to be a growing problem in our society, and it appears that social media is playing a major role.
In addition, yet another study that was conducted not too long ago discovered a direct link between social media use and increased levels of depression and loneliness…
A new study concludes that there is in fact a causal link between the use of social media and negative effects on well-being, primarily depression and loneliness. The study was published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.
“What we found overall is that if you use less social media, you are actually less depressed and less lonely, meaning that the decreased social media use is what causes that qualitative shift in your well-being,” said Jordyn Young, a co-author of the paper and a senior at the University of Pennsylvania.
Today, Americans take more anti-depressants than anyone else on the entire planet. “Deaths of despair” have hit an all-time record high in our nation, and all around us, people seem so incredibly unhappy.
One of the biggest reasons for all of this unhappiness is the fact that we are all so isolated. According to a recent YouGov poll, over 20% of American Millennials say “that they don’t have a single friend”…
More than 20% of millennials surveyed in a YouGov poll released this week claimed that they don’t have a single friend. And less than a third of millennials said they have double-digit friends, according to the data, culled online in early July.
Even if younger Americans are overstating their isolation, the jarring numbers reflect long-term rising trends in loneliness. Studies have indicated that loneliness has myriad negative mental and physical health effects.
Of course, if we all weren’t staring at screens all day long we would have much more time to make real friends in the real world.
But instead we find much more value in the online world that we have created, and at this point, the average adult in the U.S. spends six hours and 43 minutes a day staring at a screen…
Perhaps it’s no surprise then that Americans spend nearly half of their waking hours looking at screens, according to a survey of 2,000 adults.
More specifically, the survey found that 42% of the time Americans are awake, their eyes are fixated on a television, smartphone, computer, tablet, or other device. Supposing the average American slept eight hours a night (not even close to the case for most adults), the researchers calculated that people spend about six hours and 43 minutes a day staring at a screen. Over a typical lifespan, that’s 7,956 days.
Another survey discovered that 45 percent of teens say that they are online “almost constantly”. We have decided that it is the online world that really matters, but that is not true at all. Life is supposed to be an adventure, but we will never live life to the fullest if we are all staring at screens endlessly day after day.
Sadly, the truth is that social media is not going anywhere. The big social media companies are going to just keep coming up with more ways to make their products addicting, and most of us will be sucked into the vortex without any resistance whatsoever.
But hopefully the awakening regarding the harmful effects of social media will continue to grow, and hopefully more Americans will start choosing to make healthier choices regarding how they use their time.
So youre saying too much time on SHTFPLAN = NOT GOOD?
Well no shit Shelock!
*Sherlock
Anonymous, all social media can kiss my white ass. I don’t have any obligation to any of them.
* Social media helps wives become sluts, who break up their children’s home.
* Social media encourages men to act like fence jumping dogs, Lured in by sluts with great pics and no morals.
* Social media is dangerous to children who are exposed to potential predators.
* Social media is a snitch-snoop-surviel system for government law enforcement.
* Social media exposes you to a dangerous criminal element.
* Social media is an EXTREME National Security threat. (All active duty Military personnel should be banned from posting any picture or comment on any social media. Just Do your job and be quite about it.)
* Social media is controlled by Tech Monopoly Control Freak Anti-American NWO communist Leftist.
* Social media is brainwashing and a social control manipulation mechanism for the sheep. Government and Corporations LOVE the data you give to them.
These are FACTS.
So please explain why a thinking person would ever expose their family, children, privacy, to such a destructive dangerous Beast System as Social Media?
FaceBook should be despised by everyone here.
Do your family a favor, Ban them from your life.
Wake up sheep.
Arm yourselves with knowledge.
Get into top physical condition.
Wolves will soon be huffing and puffing on your very doorstep.
Snyder is doing more to me than “social media”, ’cause I don’t do social media. According to this article, maybe I shouldn’t do Michael Snyder or shtfplan either.
Starting to look that way.
Stuart, I’m starting to feel that way also!
I think Snyder is possibly unaware, social media was primarily created as a means for collecting information on the citizens, only in this case citizens are gladly giving away all their privacy (many people today have no idea how grossly indiscreet they are, this would have been deemed bizarre a generation ago). They are making it easy for corporations and gov’t to know everything they want. That’s the first step.
China has almost completed the social credit system, with the heavy assistance of Americans in big tech. The second step is establishing a social credit score here in the US. So that not only will everything be known about you, but it will be used to control your thinking, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. Here’s how; for instance, logging onto sites such as this one will give you a negative score. Too many negative scores may prevent you from traveling to a foreign country, buying a gun, being charged a mandatory social credit violation fee, from getting a drivers license, or may even bar you from the internet. Compliance will be rewarded. The goal is unquestioned obedience to the state.
Big tech is working hard to make spying on citizens easy for the state, they of course will be rewarded. This is the classic definition of fascism, a merging of state and corporate power and interests over the citizens for their mutual benefit. Corporate entities get their profits, with special rights and privileges, and the state accumulates more control and power.
Around the world most nations (including “democracies”) require their citizens using the internet to have an assigned internet ID, which is necessary to log on, no internet privacy. There are already state and corporate demands being made for the same here. You can bet a lot of people will log on with a poached ID, which will be made a criminal act.
If it comes to that, resistance would actually be easy. Just stop using all internet social media, don’t put any personal information in emails, use VPNs, don’t use big tech search engines, twitter, instagram, etc. Minimize internet and cell phone use to only what is absolutely necessary. But most Amer.s are so soft, so averse to self-discipline, and so successfully propagandized I don’t expect anything.
Another ruined site. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
shtfplan is NOT social media. To me it is news and opinion. Of course anything can become an addiction. One test might be if you can easily go on vacation and not check the site while you are away.
Montana Guy
“To me it is news and opinion.”
Agree 100%
“shtfplan is NOT social media.
Yes it is. There is virtually no news here. It is National Enquirer level fear porn and a place for people to whine to each other.
Myself included. We are also being tracked here whether we admit it or not. The sale of data is how Mac makes a living.
You want news? Go here: www(dot)thelibertydaily.com
You don’t like to be graded by others. Go on a virtual museum tour. Learn how it was made. Business deals and high culture can be found in social media, if people weren’t so masochistic with their unstructured time. (Does this make me look fat?)
Add-ons, which filter content, and profiles blocking (of the dim bulbs) is highly recommended.
comment censored
I see little difference in reading articles of a political / economic nature and debating both the validity and substance of its content face to face or thousands of miles away. Rellik as an example who’s views I like to read and often substantially agree and myself are separated by 6000 or more miles, through technology we’re next door neighbors. Unlike the youth of today if we were in taking distance we would do just that and not text. The substance of the discussions, economics, energy, and the old mainstay survival and safety are Nobel. Expanding knowledge, seeing other viewpoints is never unhealthy; ignorance and sheltering is.
why comment? this is a censored site.
Only some words are censored. If you require vulgarity to make your point, no one wants to hear what you have to say anyway.
Little wee Stuart
Let’s all just hold hands with commies and sing camp fire songs and make smores.” We will just get along, stand in line peacfully, give up your means of self defense, to big brother Beto the all knowing so very wise commie, because Beto says so.
No, little Stuart. Texans will have historical reinactments if Beto comes for the guns.
“Come and Take It”
“Remember the Alamo”
“Battle of Goliad”
“Battle of San Jacinto”
* * I DARE YOU TO LOOK THESE historical events up. The politicians controlled by commies try to wash away history.
FAIL.
People like gov Abott do not believe in Texas history.
He believes in THREATENING “fusion centering” stasi/GRU/KGB style anyone that demands Border Security. He threatens, so as to shut people up. Make them afraid to speak non PC.
FAIL.
Leftie commies in Dallas took down 100 year old historical monuments, at the cost on hundreds of thousands of taxpayers dollars. Why? Because 10 people were “offended”.
Threaten. Ban. Censor. Destroy beautiful historical works of art. You still will NOT shut the people up or shut them down.
Border Security matters.
Blue Lives matter.
Black Rifles matter.
Rioter, Looters, Burners, should be locked up. They are CRIMINALS. Lock them up as criminals.
God Bless hard working US Border Patrol.
God Bless ICE.
God Bless the US Coast Guard.
Thank all of you for your hard work.
If you are fearful of “active shooter” nutjobs. Then get your concealed carry license. And carry EVERY damn day. Just like Ted Nugent, a good American, Patriotic American, Great Texan. Ted is great harvester of organic protein. Look at Teds physique compared to thin frail girly Beto.
I want to watch the thin frail mousey prissy commie Beto take uncle Ted Nugents rifle.
That will be funny. Go for it Beto.
“Come and Take It.”
Some of us whom never subscribed to these programs, simply don’t have these sorts of problems. They sold it. You bought it.
finance is really critical when it comes to the future of businesses and trade. i also took finance during my college days”